The new course – what’s in and what’s out?

Hopefully by now you will have found and downloaded a copy of the new subject guide (for exams 2016) from the OCC.

Have you read it? Looked over it? Glanced at it? Or are you letting it gather dust, afraid to peek inside at its contents? After all, chemistry is chemistry ….. isn’t it? There can’t be that many changes – can there?

The good news is that there is still lots of chemistry packed into the new guide. The other news (and I am specifically not using ‘good’ or ‘bad’) is there are a few changes – probably more than the last time the course changed seven years ago.

I hope this blog post is able to save you a job or two in terms of sifting through the guide, finding the new material and then working out what material has been removed ….. so here we go….. (to help, I have also added the new topic names and numbers).

I think there are three important observations to make about this list:

Firstly, there has been some moving around of material between SL and HL topics (see what is ‘in’ in topic 20 and ‘out’ in topic 10 for example).

Secondly, the detail. It should be stressed that this is a list to help you but is not definitive. The guide will give you the detail (for example, we now have to teach about the ‘Winkler’ method in topic 9, Redox).

Thirdly, the options. The options have had a major overhaul (more about this in the next blog posting). Some material has moved from options into the SL / HL (eg, NMR) and some has moved from SL / HL into the options (eg, buffer calculations).

So, what do you think? Is change good? Do you prefer the old course or are you excited by the new? As ever, your thoughts are most welcome and it would be good to hear from you.